Gary Boyce, a flamboyant rancher whose attempt in the 1990s to export San Luis Valley water to urban markets sparked a battle over water that continues to this day, has died.

Friends of Boyce, who was 68 and died early Wednesday, remembered him as a self-made man who loved the land and attempted to market water from the historic land-grant Baca Ranch in order to endow a wildlife preserve.

“When they decided to sell the Luis Maria Baca Grant No. 4, Gary purchased it,” recalled John Lubitz, a Denver lawyer who knew Boyce for more than 25 years.

Backed by Farralon Capital Management, a San Francisco-based investment partnership, Boyce bought the 100,000-acre ranch, created by an 1824 Mexican land grant.

He proposed drilling wells into the deep aquifer beneath the Baca and pumping the water to the Front Range.

“His goal was to endow that ranch to create a wildlife preserve,” Lubitz said.

But Boyce had more than altruistic aims in selling water.

“Struck by the prospect of selling water at the prevailing rate of $4,000-$7,000 an acre-foot, Boyce announced that he and his Stockman’s Water Co., were ‘in the San Luis Valley to do business,’ ” according to “The San Luis Valley and the moral economy of water,” a case study included in “Water, Place and Equity,” a book that explores water policy.

The plan failed amid resistance from residents (many of them potato farmers), the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and environmental activists.

The Nature Conservancy later purchased the Baca ranch, and it is now public land that includes the Baca National Wildlife Refuge.

In 2014, Boyce launched another attempt to sell water from the Valley; he was still pursuing that plan at the time of death. “I assume his investors will still be interested in doing that,” said George Whitten, a former member of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District’s board.

Steve Vandiver, general manager of the water district, often opposed Boyce’s plans but considered him a friend.

“He was a dynamic character. We spent time together arguing, discussing and cussing over water,” Vandiver recalled.

Boyce had a gentlemanly streak and exhibited character that was steeped in the traditions of a bygone world, said Lubitz, a Denver lawyer who knew the cattle man for more than 25 years.

“His word meant something. He was kind of old school — when he said something, he meant it.”

He was a “stereotypical, true Western cowboy, rich in tradition, good manners,and few words,” said Roger Hutson, another friend.

Boyce, the son of a machinist and grandson of a farmer, spent some of his boyhood in the Valley but moved to Aspen with his mother and sister when his parents divorced,

“He was a little older than me,” said Whitten, who knew Boyce when he was a boy. “When I was 14, he was around riding a Triumph motorcycle. He had fast cars and he was a really cool character, sort of a James Dean character.”

But Boyce had a darker side, Whitten added, and didn’t fit well with his family.

Later, his efforts to sell water out of the Valley did little to endear him to neighbors, and his personality grated on many. “The way he went about things didn’t come across as genuine. He was always kind of a troubled person,” Whitten said.

As a young man, Boyce was an athlete, with a love for speed and excitement. He competed as a member of the Aspen Ski Team and represented the Harley Davidson Motor Company in motocross races, said Ada Diaz, a close friend.

An exceptional horseman, he was an avid polo player and competed in steeplechase horse racing, as well as dressage.

After leaving Aspen, he moved east to Virginia where he had a successful business importing horses, said Lubitz.

He married Joanne Schenck, daughter of Nicholas M. Schenck, a MGM film studio executive, and the couple moved to the San Luis Valley in the 1980s.

With money from his wife’s inheritance he bought the first of several ranches, Rancho Rosado.

He started a construction business, raised cattle and invested in oil, gas, and other things, Diaz said. “He was a risk taker, he knew what he was doing,” she said.

Boyce dressed and played the part of the gentleman rancher, wearing hand-tooled leather boots, expensive clothes,and smoking fine cigars. He often sported a pair of pearl-handled six shooters.

“He was bigger than life,” Diaz said.

When in Denver, he held court at Churchill Bar at the Brown, in the Brown Palace Hotel, recalled Hutson. “Typically, people would know that he was in town by his Stetson in the window of Churchill’s,” he recalled.

The bar was his office when he was in Denver, a haven where he was often surrounded by members of Colorado’s oil and gas industry, Diaz said.

“He was a great deal maker, he was a strategist, he thought big,” she added. “He was not only a good strategist and implementer, he could make things happen.”

A general assignment reporter for The Denver Post, Tom McGhee has covered business, police, courts, higher education and breaking news. He came to The Post from Albuquerque, N.M., where he worked for a year and a half covering utilities. He began his journalism career in New York City, worked for a pair of community weeklies that covered the west side of Manhattan from 14th Street to 125th Street.